Les Jones

News > That "100,000 Iraqis Killed Since War Started" Story

A recently-published study by an anti-war activist estimates that 100,000 Iraqis have died since the war started. Shannon Love of the Chicago Boys analyzed the study and found it wanting:

First, even without reading the study, alarm bells should go off. The study purports to show civilian casualties 5 to 6 times higher than any other reputable source. Most other sources put total combined civilian and military deaths from all causes at between 15,000 to 20,000. The Lancet study is a degree of magnitude higher. Why the difference?

Moreover, just rough calculations should call the figure into doubt. 100,000 deaths over roughly a year and a half equates to 183 deaths per day. Seen anything like that on the news? With that many people dying from air strikes every day we would expect to have at least one or two incidents where several hundred or even thousands of people died. Heard of anything like that? In fact, heard of any air strikes at all where more than a couple of dozen people died total?

Where did this suspicious number come from? Bad methodology.

Read the whole thing.

More analysis from TechCentralStation, which writes, mocking the Lancet editor's claims that this is more than a piece of academic investigation and therefore deserved expedited publishing:

More than a piece of academic investigation? Really? Are we sure? We don't think that publishing this, in fact fast-tracking it (A more normal "academic" paper would take up to six months to wend its way through the peer-review process and the raw data for this was only collected six and seven weeks ago.) has anything at all to do with an election in the US some four days away? Good grief man, what do you take us for, morons?

In other words, people initially took this study seriously because it was published in the Lancet, which is a scientific journal, rather than a political journal. Only it turns out the motivations for publishing it and publishing it now were political, not scientific. (The study's author stipulated that the article be published prior to the U.S. elections.) Now that the Lancet has proven it cares more about politics than science, what good is it to scientists?